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E-governance and Citizen Information 118 Relationship with Citizensoccurs when the Administration proceeds proactively, making periodic analyses of the usedata from a specific channel, collecting and dealing systematically with complaints and carryingout regular surveys of user satisfaction; a process we could conceive as the constructionof demand – placing the emphasis on the active character of the Administration’s role.Finally, an important question about electronic services has to be answered in this section– we recall that over recent years electronic services have become a fundamental axis formany administrations, to the extent of transforming some projects into a frantic race to geteServices onto their portals. The fact that use data has begun to be handled systematicallyin order to evaluate the electronic services not according to supply but to demand, hasshown that a significant number of the innovation projects carried out until now have beenaimed at a very specific user profile: mainly young users very familiar with the technologyand with a high level of education. Thus, the short term benefits of many e-governmentprojects have been restricted to a fairly reduced sector of the population.Moreover, some administrations have taken into account that the use of online services, despitetheir enormous cost, is relatively low (very low if we compare take-up with initial expectations)and that many of the users are, rather than citizens, intermediary entities (agents,for example, in the case of the online income tax return service). In the end, this has mademany administrations rethink their compulsive production of eServices and now they arelooking to impact on the citizen indirectly, putting their back-office and information systemsin order – not that these are, however, the only causes.Nevertheless, although the emphasis on electronic services has diminished in recentyears as a result of all these factors, this extreme does not signify a loss of the centralposition of the Internet channel in innovation projects, with respect to the telephone andface to face channels. Rather the contrary, the current improvements both in the telephoneand face to face channels, are increasingly supported by the establishment oftransversal information services online that feed the Citizen Information operatives withinformation. The integration of channels is feasible principally through shared informationsystems, but with interfaces adapted to the needs of the end user – depending on whetherit is a citizen connected to the Internet, a telephone service operative or a civil servantworking face to face with citizens (since these last two work with a computer monitor connectedto the Internet).http://www.uoc.edu/in3/pic
E-governance and Citizen Information 119 Relationship with Citizens7.4. Citizens as Co-managers of ServicesAs we have seen in the chapter on the theoretical framework, one of the most controversialpoints when dealing with the area of e-governance is the role accorded to citizens. In greatpart the literature on this issue is polarised into two basic positions: on the one hand the citizencan be understood as a client of the Administration – a consumer of public services – and onthe other as a political subject – in other words, as an agent capable of participating, to a greateror lesser extent, in the decision making process.In our study, however, another way of understanding the role of the citizen in the ambit ofe-governance emerges – a way that is distinct from the two previous options because it isdrawn up along another conceptual axis. We refer to the citizen as co-manager, jointly incharge of public services.Effectively, in many of the projects and initiatives analysed a citizen figure emerges who hasto be competent in managing the information resources (ever more abundant and complex)that the Administration places within their reach, and in handling the paperwork and proceduresthat the new channels put at their disposal. We have seen, for example, how in thecase of Quebec the new system for managing pensions online was deliberately conceivedas an attempt to reduce the bureaucratic apparatus of the State, transferring part of whathad been, until then, the State's tasks (suitably simplified and adapted) to the personal managementof the service's users. The Administration placed the necessary tools – using sophisticatedinformation, comparative systems and tutorials of all types – within citizens'reach so they themselves would be able to manage and plan the future of their own pensions.This incipient tendency fits together perfectly with another distinct aspect of e-governance.A great part of the efforts to improve current systems of relationships are directed towardsfacilitating the navigation and orientation of the citizen amidst the abundance of data andinformation that the Administration makes public through its portals. There is, in this sense,an explicit will to actively involve citizens in the organisation of information they might need:it is about giving them tools to organise information in accordance with their interests andindividual needs.Even though our investigation still does not allow us to draw firm conclusions with respectto this tendency, it is possible to put forward the hypothesis that e-governance seems to bedirected at transferring a part of the responsibility for the management of public services tocitizens themselves, who in the final analysis end up being the ones who have to take certaindecisions in accordance with information that the Administration itself provides. ICTs are ahttp://www.uoc.edu/in3/pic
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PROJECT INTERNET CATALONIA (PIC)E-G
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